Houston Cries For Pudge, Claims Its Music History Beats Dallas'

Our ears were burning, so we went ahead and checked out what our counterparts at the Observer's sister paper in Houston, the Press, was up to on its music blog lately. And, sure enough, it's all Dallas all the time down in H-Town these days.

(OK, not really, but two posts over the span of a week? Nothing to shake a stick at.)

And, then, well, there's this, which, OK, I'll admit, I thought was a really good idea for a feature: The Press' John Nova Lomax decided to take a look at Post-Secession Texas to figure out how the state's musical reputation might change if it broke off from the Union and split into the five news states of New Texas (consisting of Austin and Hill Country), Trinity (hey, that's us!), Brazoria/Gulfland (Houston and the Gulf Coast), Palo Duro/Plainland (the Panhandle, more or less) and El Norte/Rio Grande (the southern border counties).

It's an interesting series--ripe for discussion, without a doubt--but, predictably, it's more homerism than much else (which, to be fair, we'd probably fall prey to if we were to try a similar excercise). Here's the gist of it: New Texas gets blasted for embracing indie rock and killing its regional sound; Palo Duro gets blasted because people write songs about hating it there; Rio Grande, oddly enough, gets praised for having a sound all its own (because of the Butthole Surfers?); Dallas gets slammed for Vanilla Ice and Deep Blue Something and begrudgingly credited for some blues artists; and Houston gets all the love beause of the Geto Boys and ZZ Top.

Which is funny, 'cause I thought the ZZ Top guys were raised here? Actually, so were the Vaughans, but Lomax credits 'em to New Texas, go figure.